SUBMIT, RESIST
"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."—James 4:7.
This is a case in which if the difference is very slight apparently, and perhaps not vital, I prefer the rendering of the Authorized Version. Instead of "Be subject therefore," it reads, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." It may properly be said, they mean the same thing, I know; and yet there is a slight difference. "Be subject" to His authority is correct, but that assumes a relationship already created. But "Submit" begins at the beginning, and runs on. Begin right, submit; and then continue to submit, that is all. That is why I adopt the Authorized Version rendering. There is something sharp, clear, and definite about it. "Submit."
The two outstanding words in the text are "Submit," "Resist." "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." This is the fourth occasion that we have spent with the devil. In three we have listened to him, to the only three occasions that the Bible records, when his voice has been heard: first in the garden, slandering God to man; then in the history of Job, slandering man to God; and finally in the wilderness confronting the God-man, and making a final bid against the plans and purposes of God in His Son.
Now we come to a practical and personal application, although that has not been absent from any of our articles. We are agreed as to the actuality of Satan, and of those spiritual forces surrounding us in life. I am not proposing to argue for the truth of the Biblical revelation in that matter. We speak of our enemies as the world, the flesh, and the devil. I am inclined to think if we have the victory over the devil; the other two can be dealt with at once. So the question comes, as we saw in our last article, in the last analysis the whole question does become individual. There is a sense in which humanity cannot be dealt with in the aggregate, but one by one. Hence the greatness of Bunyan's Holy War depicting the conflict between Mansoul and the devil.
So we come now to ask the question, If we are surrounded by such forces of evil as Paul described in the paragraph I read in Ephesians, how are we going to stand up? Notice Paul is very particular in the use of the word stand. "Stand . . . withstand . . . having done all to stand." Pick those words out, and look at the context. Well, how is it going to be done? In other words, how are we individually, personally, how am I—to put the matter in the singular number —how am I to fight against this force and these forces of evil which are in existence? That is our question, and to that we come.
We start by doing that which he have already done, recognize the reality of these forces against us and the truth of the Biblical revelation of Satan. We have been considering his devices. We have considered in broad outline his wiles, and we must accept this reality. I cannot help thinking today of that little poem that was written by Vernon Charlesworth in the old days. It is very pertinent. It has in it a touch of satire which is well worth while. He wrote:
"Men don't believe in a devil now,
As their fathers used to do;
They reject one creed because it's old
For another because it's new.
"There's not a print of his cloven foot,
Nor a fiery dart from his bow
To be found in the earth or air today!
At least—they declare it is so!
"But who is it mixes the fatal draught,
That palsies heart and brain,
And loads the bier of each passing year,
With its hundred thousand slain?
"But who blights the bloom of the land today,
With the fiery breath of hell?
If it isn't the devil that does the work,
Who does? Won't somebody tell?
"Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint?
Who spreads the net for his feet?
Who sows the tares in the world's broad field?
Where the Savior sows His wheat?
"If the devil is voted not to be,
Is the verdict therefore true?
Someone is surely doing the work
The devil was thought to do.
"They may say the devil has never lived,
They may say the devil is gone,
But simple people would like to know
Who carries the business on?"
Doggerel, if you like. I call it a very profound little poem. We start believing that he is, and that he is still in the business. We stand with the Biblical revelation. We stand with James in my text, with Paul, who described him as "an angel of light"; with Peter, who described him as "a roaring lion, going about, seeking whom he may devour"; with Jesus, Who called him the "prince of this world."
Now we are the Lord's. Our Master confronted Satan in the wilderness, and was victorious over him; but we are in the fight. How are we going to fight so as to win? How are we going to fight so that we shall not be defeated by this vast host of evil, and this tremendous intelligence—prostituted intelligence—but intelligence nevertheless? How are we going to fight? My message is to those who are in the fight, and everything is in the text. There is no need to stay with it long. I am not going to. All I want to do is to emphasize it, or, shall I say? to underscore it; to call my own soul to the attention of what it says; and then to go out to be obedient to the revelation. Everything is in the verse. Any sermon, if sermon it is, is an application of the message of the text. "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."
The conflict against evil is so real that there - - must be a definite plan of campaign. Haphazard warfare is useless; and unless we have a plan of campaign, we shall be defeated. I am thinking individually. The whole thing is there. I have said it twice already. I say it again: "Submit," "Resist."
Submit, that is, put yourselves under control. There was a man who once said, "I am a man under authority, and I have soldiers under me." That was a revelation of a real philosophy of life. Under authority, and therefore in authority; and the authority to which we yield ourselves is the very authority we ourselves shall be able to exercise over others. That has a wider application, but it applies right here. The first thing is submitting, and submit to God; and having submitted, then the fight is on: —resist, resist the devil.
A few words about those two words. First of all, a question arises, why are we so often beaten? I confine myself to Christian people, those who are His, those who are enlisted, and who desire to follow the Lord; and this arch enemy of the human soul gets a victory over us. There are two or three reasons perhaps.
Of course, people are beaten by the powers of evil when there is neither submission nor resistance, when there is no recognition of the authority of God, and no fight put up against evil. Necessarily they are beaten, they are defeated.
But, on the other hand, there are two other reasons that may be given for defeat. Where there is resistance without submission we are doomed to be defeated. What do you mean by that? Says someone, I mean this, if I go out and make up my mind I am going to fight the devil in my own soul, and life, and force, I am going to fight, and I arrange everything, and put up a fight, I shall be beaten. It is a sort of trite remark to make; the devil is older than I am, and wiser than I am; he is cleverer than I am! If I go out to fight in my own strength, I am doomed to defeat. That is where the uselessness of all pledges comes in. Forgive me if you do not agree with me. I do not like pledges. I do not believe in pledges. I am asked to sign a pledge not to do this, that, or the other. Oh yes, you may put in, with the help of God; but it constantly means, fighting alone. The Divine method will make a man independent of profane language for the expression of his thinking. These pledges may have their value, and I do not want to be hypercritical; but you will be beaten if it is nothing more than a pledge you have made. Unless there has been submission, resistance is of no value.
On the other hand there are those who are beaten because they submit, and then fail to resist. Yes, they submit. They are quite sincere. They will give themselves to Christ. They will obey the voice of the evangelist, and come out on the Lord's side. They mean it, and then they go forth, and expect everything is done, and they are not to know the power of evil in its suggestiveness. It is a great mistake. My brother, if you have recently given yourself to Christ, you know the power of evil more poignantly and acutely than you ever did before. The devil is not concerned with the people who lie asleep in his arms, but with the people who are awake, and who have started out in this great crusade. If you simply submit, and are not prepared to gird yourself for the war, to put on the whole panoply of God and fight, you will be beaten. It is the connection of those two words that is so important if we are to be victorious. Submit first; resist, secondly; and they must be kept together. Neither to submit nor resist is, of course, to be the fool and plaything of the devil. To submit without offering resistance is to be beaten. To resist without having first submitted is to be defeated. We must have the two.
So when we speak of the practice of resistance, we begin by insisting upon the necessity for submission. The practice of resistance begins with the act of submission, and the attitude of submission must be constantly maintained.
But I ask the question, To whom are we to submit? We are to submit to Christ, to God in Christ. We are to submit to Him. What does that mean? We are to submit to One Who knows the foe as we cannot know him; to One Who knows us as we do not know ourselves; and to One Who knows the whole field; to One Who could look on, in the days of His flesh, with curious and marvelous and astounding majesty, to the consummation of the age, and in every case, if we watch and listen to Him, when He is referring to that consummation, it is always in tones of triumph, never of suggested or supposed or possible defeat. Always He sees the whole field. He sees all the processes, all the battles, all the darkness; and He sees the ultimate. I am asked to submit therefore to the great Captain of my salvation, Who knows the foe as I cannot, Who understands me as I cannot know myself, and Who knows the whole field.
Submit to Him, and submit to Him for what? For guidance, for strength, for love. Submit to Him for indication of how to fight this next battle. Submit to Him; first of all in an act of complete surrender, and then in an attitude that maintains that first act of surrender, in a constant surrender.
That means asking, questioning. That means that before I undertake any mission, before I do any work, before I commit myself to any position, knowing that our conflict is against the spiritual hosts of wickedness, I had better go to my Lord and find out if it is His will, for if that is where He wants me to be He will show me how to strike the blow in the act of resistance.
My brethren, if we take that and look at it in its application to life, it has an application which is physical, and a mental and spiritual application also.
Physical. I need not enter into that now, but to that young man, he who is starting out on a life of devotion to Jesus Christ, do not forget that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost; and do not forget that the first approach of the devil is always through the physical, as we saw in the temptation story, always. Then let your life be in harmony with that tremendous fact. There were two books published many years ago now, one written by a great statesman and politician here in America, the other by a French saint. The book of the latter, Charles Wagner, was called The Simple Life. The book of the former, Theodore Roosevelt, the American statesman, was called The Strenuous Life. It is an interesting fact that came to my knowledge, the writer of The Simple Life went to stay with the author of The Strenuous Life, and they talked all one day, and found out that they were not contrary, that they were correlated; that to live the simple life was to be armed for the strenuous life; and to live the strenuous life it is necessary that we reduce the things of the body to simplicity. Resist, and resist in the realm of the physical.
In the realm of the mental. If I am going to fight this enemy, I need to keep my mind occupied. Sang one,
"Want of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
And our Lord gave us a definite parabolic commentary on that truth in the parable of the empty house from which the evil spirit had been exorcised, the house swept and garnished and made beautiful and left empty. What happened? Said Jesus, Seven other spirits worse than the first entered, and the last state of that house was more terrific than before the deliverance came. Yes, I am talking now of the mental. The mind must be kept occupied, constantly, healthily, easily. Healthily? Oh, how easy it is to occupy our minds and our thinking by reading that which in itself is impure. Now, if we are going to fight the devil we have to keep our minds healthily occupied. We have to choose our friends carefully by their habits and by their conversation. There are friendships that we cannot form, or, having formed, must break with, if we are to put up this fight successfully.
But of course the central thing is the spiritual. For that we need ultimately to keep near to God.
We cannot keep near to God except through Jesus Christ. If we try to keep near to God apart from Him we are in the presence of a great mysterious abstraction that we cannot understand ultimately. No man by searching can find out God unto perfection; but God has revealed Himself in Christ, and it is the cultivation of that knowledge of God, known in Christ day by day, hour by hour. Of course, that means study of His Word and the great and holy exercises of prayer and work according to His will. All these things must be carefully watched, and in watching them we are fighting evil and Satan.
Another thing, a simple thing in that connection: What are we to do? Give the devil a wide berth. I will not stop there, because I am quite sure you will think about it. Do not play on the edge of danger. Once I heard our friend Dr. John Hutton say something, "God will not suffer you to be tempted above you are able to bear, but with the temptation will make a way of escape." And, said Dr. Hutton, "Young people will find the way of escape is the King's highway, and a good pair of legs, and a long hard run." Do not go as near as you can to danger. Give the devil a wide berth. Do not see how near you can go to the things of the world and the flesh and the devil and remain cleansed and unscathed. The wider the berth, the better. Remember, courage is shown by a pair of heels running along the King's highway.
Now, what does all this mean? There may be some here not conscious of being beaten by the devil. Let that person, that man, woman, youth, young lady, make this consideration utmost at once. Submit and resist. Do not let pride that you have not been dragged to the depths weaken you. Listen, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." I maintain to get the real force of that is to read it thus, Let him that most assuredly standeth take heed lest he fall.
But to those who have fallen: my friend, if you are following the Lord Jesus, there is a definite conflict ahead of you. The victory may be completely yours; and you have only these two things to remember, and remembering you can win. "Submit," "Resist." Submit to God, and resist the devil.
So we begin our fight by yielding ourselves to the authority of our Lord, which is the authority of God.
"Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life's alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within Thine arms,
And strong shall be my hand.
"My heart is weak and poor
Until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure,—
It varies with the wind.
It cannot freely move
Till Thou hast wrought its chain;
Enslave it with Thy matchless love
And deathless it shall reign.
"My power is faint and low
Till I have learned to serve;
It wants the needed fire to glow;
It wants the breeze to nerve;
It cannot drive the world
Until itself be driven;
Its flag can only be unfurled
When Thou shalt breathe from heaven.
"My will is not my own
Till Thou hast made it Thine;
If it would reach a monarch's throne
It must its crown resign;
It only stands unbent
Amid the clashing strife,
When on Thy bosom it has leant,
And found in Thee its life."
“Submit! Resist!
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